Shut Your Eyes Tight

by John Verdon

  Hardwick looked strangely at him, seeming to register the implication of his statement.

  “Time is running out,” Gurney added, turning toward Giotto Skard.

  Again the old man laughed. He could not be bluffed. There would be no deal.

  A girl’s face appeared on the screen, half obscured by a tumble of blond hair, full of fear and fury, larger than life, distorted into ugliness by its closeness to the camera.

  “You fuck!” the girl screamed, her voice cracking. “You fuck! You fuck! You fuck!” She began to cough violently, wheezing, hacking.

  The cadaverous Dr. Lazarus appeared from behind an upended pew, crawling like a giant black beetle across the smoky floor.

  Giotto Skard was watching the screen. Worse than emotionless, he seemed amused.

  This minor distraction, Gurney concluded, was as good as it was going to get. This one last chance was all he had left.

  There was no one to blame. No one to save him. His own decisions had brought him to this place. This most dangerous place in all his life. This narrow place, teetering on the edge of hell.

  Gate of Heaven.

  There was only one thing he could do.

  He hoped it would be enough.

  If it wasn’t, he hoped that perhaps one day Madeleine would be able to forgive him.

  Chapter 79

  The last bullet

  There was no course at the academy that adequately prepared you for being shot. Hearing it described by those who’d been through it gave you some idea, and seeing it happen added a certain disturbing dimension, but like most powerful experiences, the idea of it and the reality of it existed in two different worlds.

  His plan, such as it was, conceived as it was in a second or two, was, like jumping out a window, simplicity itself. The plan was to launch himself directly at the little man with the gun, who was standing ten or twelve feet from him next to Ashton’s empty chair just inside the open door. The hope was to smash into him with sufficient force to drive him backward through the doorway—the momentum carrying them both over the small landing and down the stone stairs. The price was getting shot, probably more than once.

  As Giotto Skard watched the blond girl shrieking “Fuck!” Gurney hurled himself forward with a guttural roar, placing one arm across the heart area of his chest and the other across his forehead. Skard’s .25-caliber pistol would not have great stopping power, except to those two areas, and Gurney was resigned to absorbing elsewhere whatever damage was necessary.

  It was crazy, probably suicidal, but he saw no alternative.

  The deafening report of the first shot in the small room came almost immediately. With a shocking impact, the bullet shattered Gurney’s right wrist, which was pressed against the heart side of his breastbone.

  The second bullet was a spike of fire through his stomach.

  The third was the bad one.

  Neither here nor there.

  An explosion of electricity. A blinding green spark, a spark like an exploding star. Screaming. A scream of terror and shock, screaming into a rage. The light is the scream, the scream is the light.

  There is nothing. And there is something. At first it’s hard to tell which is which.

  A white expanse. Could be nothing. Could be a ceiling.

  Somewhere below the white expanse, somewhere above him, a black hook. A small black hook extended like a beckoning finger. A gesture of vast meaning. Too vast for words. Everything now is too vast for words. He can’t think of any words. Not a single one. Forgets what they are. Words. Small bumpy objects. Black plastic insects. Designs. Pieces of something. Alphabet soup.

  From the hook hangs a colorless transparent bag. The bag is bulging with colorless transparent liquid. From the bag a transparent tube descends toward him. Like the neoprene gas tube on a model airplane in the park. He can smell the airplane fuel. He watches as the practiced flick of a deft forefinger on the propeller brings the little engine sputtering to life. The volume and pitch of the sound rises, the engine screaming, the scream building to a constant shriek. On the way home from the park, trailing his father, his taciturn father, he falls on a pile of stones. His knee is cut and bloody. The blood trickles down his shin onto his sock. He doesn’t cry. His father looks happy, looks proud of him, later tells his mother about his great achievement, that he’s reached an age where he doesn’t have to cry anymore. It’s a rare thing for his father to look at him with pride. His mother says, “For Godsake, he’s only four, he’s allowed to cry.” His father says nothing.

  He sees himself driving his car. A familiar Catskill road. A deer crossing ahead of him, a doe passing into the opposite field. And then her fawn following her, unexpectedly. The thump. Image of the twisted body, mother looking back, waiting in the field.

  Danny in the gutter, the red BMW speeding away. The pigeon he was following into the street flying away. He was only four.

  Nino Rota music. Poignant, ironic, giddy. Like a sad circus. Sonya Reynolds slowly dancing. The autumn leaves falling.

  Voices.

  “Can he hear us now?”

  “It’s possible. The brain scans yesterday showed significant activity in all the sensory centers.”

  “Significant? But …?”

  “The patterns remain erratic.”

  “Meaning?”

  “His brain shows evidence of normal function, but it comes and goes, and there’s some evidence of sensory switching, which may be temporary. It’s a bit like certain drug experiences, hallucinogenics, where sounds are seen and colors are heard.”

  “And the prognosis for that is …?”

  “Mrs. Gurney, with traumatic brain injuries …”

  “I know you don’t know. But what do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he recovered fully. I’ve seen cases in which a sudden spontaneous remission—”

  “And you wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t?”

  “Your husband was shot in the head. It’s remarkable that he’s alive.”

  “Yes. Thank you. I understand. He may get better. Or he may get worse. And you really don’t have a clue, do you?”

  “We’re doing as much as we can. When the brain swelling goes down, the situation may be clearer.”

  “You’re sure he’s not in pain?”

  “He’s not in pain.”

  Heaven.

  Warmth and coolness bathed him like the inflow and ebbing of a wave or a shifting summer breeze.

  Now the coolness had the scent of dewy grass and the warmth carried the subtle scent of tulips in the sun.

  The coolness was the coolness of his sheet, and the warmth was the warmth of women’s voices.

  Warmth and coolness were combined in the soft pressure of lips against his forehead. A wonderful sweetness and gentleness.

  Judgment.

  New York County Criminal Court. A crappy courtroom, bleak, colorless. The judge a cartoon of exhaustion, cynicism, and faulty hearing.

  “Detective Gurney, the accusations are voluminous. How do you plead?”

  He can’t speak, can’t respond, can’t even move.

  “Is the defendant present?”

  “No!” cries a chorus of voices in unison.

  A pigeon rises from the floor, disappears in the smoky air.

  He wants, tries, to speak, to prove he is there, but he can’t speak, can’t utter a word or move a finger. He strains to force even a syllable, even a gagging cry from his throat.

  The room is on fire. The judge’s robe is smoldering. He announces, wheezing, “The defendant is remanded for an indefinite period to the place where he is, which shall be reduced in size, until such time as the defendant is dead or insane.”

  Hell.

  He’s standing in a windowless room, a cramped room with stale air and an unmade bed. He looks for the door, but the only door opens into a closet, a closet just inches deep, a closet backed by a concrete wall. He’s having trouble breathing. He bangs on the walls, but the bang isn’t
a bang; it’s a flash of fire and smoke. Then, by the side of the bed, he sees a slit in the wall and in the slit a pair of eyes watching him.

  Then he’s in the space behind the wall, the space from which the eyes were watching, but the slit is gone and the space is totally dark. He tries to calm himself. Tries to breathe slowly, evenly. He tries to move, but the space is too small. He can’t raise his arms, can’t bend his knees. And he topples sideways, crashing to the floor, but the crash isn’t a crash; it’s a scream. He can’t move the arm beneath his body, can’t raise himself. The space is narrower there, nothing will move. An accelerating terror makes it almost impossible to breathe. If only he could make a sound, speak, cry out.

  Far away the coyotes begin to howl.

  • • •

  Life.

  “Are you sure he can hear me?” Her voice was pure hope.

  “What I can tell you for sure is that the activity pattern I’m seeing on the scan is consistent with the neural activity of hearing.” His voice was as cool as a sheet of paper.

  “Is it possible that he’s paralyzed?” Her voice was at the edge of darkness.

  “The motor center wasn’t directly affected, so far as we can see. However, with injuries of this sort …”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “All right, Mrs. Gurney. I’ll leave you with him.”

  “David,” she said softly.

  He still couldn’t move, but the panic was evaporating, somehow diluted and dispersed by the sound of the woman’s voice. The enclosure that held him, whatever it was, no longer crushed him.

  He knew the woman’s voice.

  With her voice came the image of her face.

  He opened his eyes. At first he saw nothing but light.

  Then he saw her.

  She was looking at him, smiling.

  He tried to move, but nothing moved.

  “You’re in a cast,” she said, “Relax.”

  Suddenly he remembered the mad dash across the room at Giotto Skard, the first deafening shot.

  “Is Jack all right?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Tears filled his eyes, blurring her face.

  After a while his memory expanded backward. “The fire …?”

  “Everyone got out.”

  “Ah. Good. Good. Jack found the …?” He couldn’t remember the word.

  “The remote lock thing, yes. You reminded him to look in Ashton’s pocket.” She made an odd little laughing, choking, sobbing sound.

  “What was that all about?”

  “It just flashed through my mind that ‘Look in Ashton’s pocket’ might have been your last words.”

  He started to laugh but immediately cried out from the pain in his chest, then started to laugh again and cried out again. “Oh, God, no, no, don’t make me laugh.” Tears were streaming down his cheeks. His chest ached dreadfully. He was becoming exhausted.

  She leaned toward him and wiped his eyes with a crumpled tissue.

  “What about Skard?” he asked, his voice hardly audible now.

  “Giotto? You made as big a mess of him as he made of you.”

  “Stairs?”

  “Oh, yes. Probably the first time he’d ever been thrown down a flight of stairs by a man he’d already shot three times.”

  There was so much in her voice, so many vying emotions, but he detected in that rich mixture an element of innocent pride. It made him laugh. The tears came again.

  “Rest now,” she said. “People are going to be lining up to talk to you. Hardwick told everyone at BCI everything that happened, and everything you discovered about who was who and what was what, and he told them what an incredible hero you were and how many lives you saved, but they’re eager to hear it all from you personally.”

  He said nothing for a while, trying to reach out as far as his memory would take him. “When did you talk to them?”

  “Exactly two weeks ago today.”

  “No, I mean about the … the Skard business, and the fire.”

  “Two weeks ago today. The day it happened, the day I got back from New Jersey.”

  “Jesus. You mean …?”

  “You’ve been a little out of it.” She paused, her eyes filling suddenly with tears, her breath coming in shaky gasps. “I almost lost you,” she said, and as she said it, something wild and desperate swept across her face, something he’d never seen before.

  Chapter 80

  The light of the world

  “Is he asleep?”

  “Not really asleep. Just sort of dazed and dozing. They put him on a temporary Dilaudid drip to reduce the pain. If you talk to him, he’ll hear you.”

  It was true. He smiled at the truth of it. But the drug did more than reduce the pain. It obliterated it in a wave of … of what? A wave of … okayness. He smiled at the okayness of it.

  “I don’t want to disturb him.”

  “Just say what you have to say. He’ll hear you perfectly well, and it won’t disturb him.”

  He knew the voices. The voices of Val Perry and Madeleine. Beautiful voices.

  Val Perry’s beautiful voice: “David? I came to thank you.” There was a long silence. The silence of a distant sailboat crossing a blue horizon. “I guess that’s all I really have to say. I’m leaving an envelope for you. I hope it’s enough. It’s ten times the amount we agreed on. If it’s not enough, let me know.” Another silence. A small sigh. The sigh of a breeze over a field of orange poppies. “Thank you.”

  He couldn’t tell where his body ended and the bed began. He couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

  Then he was awake, looking up at Madeleine.

  “It’s Jack,” she was saying. “Jack Hardwick from BCI. Can you talk to him? Or shall I tell him to come back tomorrow?”

  He looked past her at the figure in the doorway, saw the gray crew cut, the ruddy face, the ice-blue malamute eyes.

  “Now is good.” Something about the need to make sense with Hardwick, to focus, began to clear his thought process.

  She nodded, stepped aside, as Hardwick came to the bed. “I’m going downstairs for some horrible coffee,” she said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “You know,” Hardwick rasped after she left the room, raising a bandaged hand, “one of those fucking bullets went right through you and hit me.”

  Gurney looked at the hand, didn’t see much damage. He remembered how Marian Eliot had referred to Hardwick: a smart rhinoceros. He started to laugh. Apparently the Dilaudid drip had been reduced enough that the laugh hurt. “You have any news that I might care about?”

  “You’re cold, Gurney, very cold.” Hardwick shook his head in mock distress. “You aware that you broke Giotto Skard’s back?”

  “When I pushed him down the stairs?”

  “You didn’t push him down the stairs. You rode him down the stairs like he was a fucking sled. Result being that he ended up in that paraplegic wheelchair you’d been threatening him with. And I guess then he started thinking about that other little unpleasantness you mentioned—the possibility of his fellow inmates taking the occasional piss in his face. So, bottom line, cut to the chase, he made a deal with the DA for life without parole with guaranteed medical separation from the general prison population.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “He gave us the addresses of Karnala’s special customers. The ones who liked to go all the way.”

  “And?”

  “And some of the girls we found at those addresses were … still alive.”

  “That was the deal?”

  “Plus, he had to turn in the rest of the organization. Immediately.”

  “He turned in his other two sons?”

  “Without a second thought. Giotto Skard is not a sentimental man.”

  Gurney smiled at the understatement.

  Hardwick went on. “But I got a question for you. Given how … practical …
he is about his business affairs, and how crazy Leonardo was, why didn’t Giotto do away with him the first time he heard about those peculiar little beheading requests that Leonardo was inserting into Karnala’s customer transactions?”

  “Easy. Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  “The goose being Leonardo, aka Dr. Scott Ashton?”

  “Ashton was big in his field … drawing card at Mapleshade. Kill him, the school might close … cut off a ready supply of sick young women.” Gurney’s eyes drifted shut momentarily. “Not something … not something Giotto would want to happen.”

  “Then why kill him at the end?”

  “All unraveling … going up in smoke, you might say. No more … golden eggs.”

  “You okay, hotshot? You sound a little fuzzy.”

  “Never better. Without the golden eggs … the crazy goose … becomes a liability. Risk-reward thing. In the chapel Giotto finally saw Leonardo as all risk, no reward. Scale tipped … Greater benefit in killing him than keeping him alive.”

  Hardwick emitted a thoughtful grunt. “A very practical madman.”

  “Yes.” After a long silence, Gurney asked, “Giotto turn in anyone else?”

  “Saul Steck. We went in with some NYPD boys, found him in that Manhattan brownstone. Unfortunately, he shot himself before we could get to him. Interesting thing about Steck, by the way. Remember I told you about his stint in a psychiatric hospital after his arrest years ago on multiple rape charges? Guess who the consulting psychiatrist was in the hospital’s sex-offender rehabilitation program?”

  “Ashton?”

  “The very same. Guess he got to know Saul pretty well—decided he had enough potential to make an exception to the Skard family-only rule. When you think about it, the man was a damn good judge of character. Could spot a useful psychopathic scumbag a mile away.”